The Weekend Hotline 7.19.03

Archive

OK, I have to start off with this.

Modzelewski over in music found possibly the greatest thing ever invented on this planet or any other. That bastion of all things pure Las Vegas has apparently created a brand, spankin new feature for all the people that are just too bored with Vegas as it is.

Hunting For Bambi.

The premise is this: For the low, bargain price of $10,000 (that’s $2500 non-refundable deposit and a $7500 balance) You get airfare, a 3 day, 4 night stay in Vegas with meals included, your Hunt, and a video of your hunt. Oh, the hunt you ask?

You and your friends get to travel to a ranch located somewhere in or around Vegas, and chase down naked women and shoot them with a paintball gun. Yes, you read that correctly Naked women run around, and you hunt them with paintball guns. The women are paid $1000 per hunt and $2500 if they don’t get shot so it’s actually like really a hunt.

Best business venture ever.

As for my excuse for last week, I found out on Friday that was going to Boston for the weekend. Which, I was fine with. Boston was a good time, and we never even managed to get over into the Harvard Square section of town which I assume is where the good drinking is. Went out in the Quincy Market section of town on Saturday and had a blast, even if it did cost a decent chunk of change to go out drinking but hey, it’s Boston, I can’t complain that much.

Mailbag

Don’t know how real or fake this is, but:

Hi,
My name is Tammie Clark and I am hoping you can help me or advise me. Steve Austin was my brother, Danny Smith’s, best friend before his career really took off and he moved from Douglasville, GA, back to TX. Actually my brother accompanied him on that flight – Steve got him drunk…..a little humor. Danny was afraid of flying and that was his first and only flight.
Anyway to get to my point — as friends do, when one moves away they started to drift. Danny got lung cancer, Steve knew he was sick, he even made it back for a last visit.
Not long after that Steve and Jenny got divorced and she went back to England and he hooked up with his new wife Debbie or Deborah or whatever, I forget her name, Danny had his number changed and Steve did also since he moved in with his new wife, no one was able to contact Steve when Danny died. He was buried with one of Steve’s wrestling cards. He really meant a lot to him. I often wonder in the back of Steve’s mind when he got hurt August 3rd of 1997 if he instinctively knew something was wrong. Danny was buried that day.
My reason for e-mailing you, and it has taken me almost 4 years to be able to do this — it still hurts so much — is to see if you can advise me on how to make sure Steve knows Danny is gone and to tell him thanks for being his friend those years. He can never know how much he meant to Danny.
I don’t ask or expect a contact from him as I can only imagine how busy a wrestler may be, maybe if you could forward a e-mail to his publicist or something. It would mean a lot to Danny’s sons for Steve to know that they haven’t forgotten him and they still love him too. He was and still is a main figure in their life even though it has been 4 years since they have heard from him.
I would appreciate all you can do to help me. And again I am not asking for any personal information on how to contact Steve myself, I just want for somehow my message of thanks to be delivered to him. I am not a fan of wrestling (we are kickboxers) so I am close to clueless in what direction to take. I picked you because you were first on the list of contacts. If possible – I know you are busy yourself — please reply to me any thing you think I may be able to do.

In friendship,
Tammie Clark – LexisMommy@aol.com

Probably not real, but whatever. I can feel I did my good deed for the week.

Top Story

In an interesting, if not terribly impressive story, Tickets for a WCW – World Championship Wrestling event has been listed on TicketBastard’s website. Tickets are not on sale yet but the event is scheduled for 1/1/04 at the Columbus Civic Center in Columbus, GA.

Isn’t this an interesting tidbit? Vince, to this point, has allegedly been adamant about not resurrecting the WCW name because it’s a dead brand, and he sees no point in kicking a dead horse.

No, I really don’t want to get into too much speculation about what this could mean for the WCW name, but it does cast a different light on Austin’s possible “firing” by Linda McMahon on Monday. Will it be Austin who gets fired or Bischoff?

The reason I ask THAT question, is because 1/1/04 is not a Monday it’s a Thursday. Which would mean, not only is it a WCW namebrand on the Ticket, but it is, in fact, happening on Smackdown’s day and not only is it happening on Smackdown’s day, but it’s happening LIVE on Smackdown’s day. Could we be seeing the WWE moving to two live shows per week? Leaving Raw as the Flagship on Monday and seeing the resurrection of Thunder.

I just shivered a little with that line.

Regardless, if they do move forward with this, which I don’t think would be a bad idea at all, it will be interesting to see if it affects the “competition” between the two shows. It was reported earlier on 411 that Vince has banned the thought of competition between the two shows which shows, as now Smackdown generally sucks as much as Raw.

Other News

Well, the other biggest news stories on the site right now is the identities of two masked dudes on Smackdown who are two OVW guys you either haven’t, or shouldn’t have, ever heard of.

The other big story is that HHH/Goldberg will, err won’t errr yes they will in fact wrestle this weekend at a house show in Cali.

So, that being said, I might as well bring back an old gimmick, cuz I’m only on Page 3 after exhausting the actual news.

The Week In Wrestling

Maybe I should do this regularly with how little news there is to actually report on Saturday.

Raw

The show immediately gets lowed by ** because we have Coach doing the announcing duties. So, we’re down to a guy who hasn’t made an original joke in four years and a dude who’s just kind of annoying. BRING IN SCHIAVONE, DAMMIT.

Actual, no, my target announce team on Raw right now would be Joey Styles and Al Snow but I’d settle for Scott Hudson and Al Snow. I mean, hell, Al ain’t doing nothing Tough Enough’s over, give him something to do. He’s entertaining enough to carry an announce team as color. He should be announcing more than Tazz should.

The Highlight Reel opens the show, which is quickly becoming the only can’t miss segment on Raw every week. This week’s guest is a returning Eric Bischoff. This eventually brings out Austin and they argue over how to deal with Kane. The long and short of this segment is Kane is banned from the building, he’s got an interview with JR tonight in Stamford, and Jericho got a stunner.

There was a six-person intergender match but it sucked and wasn’t worth watching, much less paraphrasing.

Lance Storm vs Maven earned a “boring” chant. Go figure.

Then, there was a segment that went on for approximately 4 days in fact, it might STILL be going on, but I’m afraid to put it on SPIKE TV to check. La Resistance came out to sing the French National Anthem. After a commercial break, the Dudleys were out to drive off the Frenchies and take over with a gawd-awful-embarassing version of OUR national anthem.

Eric made a point on Tuesday that we should drop the Star Spangled Banner in favor of God Bless America my ex-gf used to argue that it should be America the Beautiful. The general argument is because the SSB is nigh-impossible to sing properly, because of the range needed to actually sing it as it’s written. I SAY LEAVE IT AS IT IS YOU COMMUNISTS.

Actually, I just say that because I like the SSB a lot, even though I can’t come close to singing it properly.

Evolution took on the Dudleyz w/ Spike after they came out to beat up the French guys and then proceeded to beat them elimination style without losing a single pinfall. He-Man, inspiring greatness in Man-at-Arms and Teela since two months ago. I’ll leave it to the reader to decide who is who.

Bischoff makes RVD v Kane for next week. So next week, we get Jericho/Michaels and RVD/Kane. This week, we get Rodney Mack v Rosey. I’d be pissed if I was there live.

Booker T and Christian had a very good match continuing their feud, which is possibly the best feud thus far this year. This match ended after the first ref was knocked out and the second ref gave the match to Christian. The first ref woke up to argue the point, and Austin came out to rule the match must continue, and insert a THIRD ref into the match. I think they need to be careful overusing this “THE MATCH MUST CONTINUE” stuff, or else they will make it 1) an expectation and 2) do away with DQ finishes some of which are absolutely necessary sometimes.

JR interviewed Kane back in Stamford, CT cuz, you know, that makes total sense considering the McMahon’s air their prostitution accusations in the ring. But it would come to make sense later, as Kane would light JR on fire. But, not before JR brought up the fact that Kane was not burned or scarred.

Now, except for the whole lighting JR on fire thing, I think that interview was great. So, now we have a Kane who was never burned and scarred, but who thinks he is. JR, during the interview said: “Kane, you mean you’ve never looked ” before he got cut off. So, I guess the presumption is that Kane has not looked in a mirror without first having on the mask since the accident, which I can suspend my disbelief enough to buy. He can’t stand the look of his “deformed” face, so he refuses to look at it. Cheers to the WWF Creative folks for coming up with something for people to buy.

Smackdown

Vince recapped the Zach Gowen storyline, since it’s been going on FOREVER. Some of their “new fans” might not know what’s going down.

The opening match was Chris Benoit vs Matt Hardy in a semifinal US Title match, which Benoit won after a great, fun, 10-minute match. Great stuff from these guys as per usual.

Smackdown was also great if, for no other reason, THAN THE RETURN OF THE CONQUISTADORS~! They lost, but it’s ok It’s FINALLY time for the big return of the Conquistadors. Is the world ready? I think not.

Eddy won his US Title semifinal against Slim Shady Gunn. Which sets up Benoit vs Eddy for the US Title at the next PPV. Yeah, I can live with that. Gunn, on the other hand, will be wrestling Jaime Knoble, boy.

The main event was Kurt Angle v The Bigshow/The Worlds Greatest Tag Team. The really stretched on that name there, didn’t they. Zach Gowen gave the assist to Angle. The thing I find most amusing about this match is how everyone has no problem with Angle winning a 3-on-1 match, but if the same thing happened on Raw, and HHH beat all three dudleys by himself, the rage wouldn’t die down till months later. Hell, even if HHH beat Funaki, Crash Holly, and Mini Max in the same match. Whatever though.

NWA: TMJ

Yeah, I didn’t watch it this week BUT I WANTED TO.

In Other Reading

Raywat Deonandan has finally returned with something new to read.

The Biscuiti that isn’t Matt checks in with the best and worst gimmick matches ever in wrestling. I personally think he forgot Jake Roberts and Rick Martel’s god-awful blindfold match from Wrestlemania 4, but that’s just me.

I get to pimp Nason!. It’s been a while. Nason has some thoughts on a recent indy signing to the WWF and also the state of the WWF announcers.

In Conclusion

My next unscheduled weekend off will likely be the weekend of August 9th, when the Hotline goes international on a trip to Montreal.

But, if all goes well, I’ll see you back here next week. Stay tuned for Bower.